by Shreya Srivastava
(PNAS, 2020)
For almost two years now, the world has been struck by one of the most unprecedented events in history, a global pandemic that has taken almost 5 million lives (COVID-19 CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC, 2021). COVID-19 has impacted everyone, no matter their age, gender or occupation; as we adjusted to our new normal with masks and social distancing, scientists were busy collaborating in laboratories to create an antigen for the virus. Typically, vaccines undergo 3 stages (10 to 15 years) of processing and testing until they receive FDA approval during which they are developed, tried on animals, and then, only if declared safe, tried on humans (Cagle, 2020). However, with a pandemic stealing lives by the second, the administration’s emergency sector, Emergency Use Authorization (EUA), was forced to cut the process to less than four months, overtaking the mumps vaccine from 1960 for the record of the most quickly devised vaccine (Cohen, 2020). Although currently there are no FDA-approved vaccines, all vaccines being administered have still undergone copious testing and have been approved by the EUA.
A married couple of scientists working in the oncology and infectious disease fields, Ugur Sahin and Ozlem Tureci, are credited as the brains behind the first effective COVID-19 vaccine with around a 95% efficiency rate (Singapore Government Agency, 2020). Sahin and Tureci, founders of BioNTech, worked in collaboration with Pfizer to manufacture vaccines worldwide, and they project to have distributed over a billion doses by the end of 2021 (CNN, 2020; Chen, 2020).
Furthermore, another major distributor of COVID-19 vaccines is Moderna, a biotech company founded in 2010 by Derrick Rossi. Led by Tal Zaks, the team responsible for creating the Moderna vaccine was able to achieve around 95% efficiency as well (Kollewe, 2020). Moderna intends to produce 600 million to 1 billion vaccines by the end of 2021 and have them dispersed and administered as soon as possible (Higgins-Dunn, 2021).
Lastly, another major vaccine circulating throughout the world right now is the Johnson & Johnson vaccine developed by Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies (Johnson & Johnson, 2021). It has an 85% success rate in preventing disease; the corporation optimistically aims, just like the other two organizations, to produce at least a billion doses by the end of 2021 (Kansteiner, 2020).
Although scientists were able to develop a temporary fix to the pandemic, the distribution of vaccines evenly amongst developing and developed countries has proven to be a challenge. As of mid-September, 60.18% of residents in high-income countries are at least halfway vaccinated, in comparison to a minuscule 3.07% in low-income countries (United Nations, 2021). The source of this inequality comes from the cost of the vaccine. According to UNICEF, data has shown that the cost for each person to receive the vaccine is around $3.70, thus proving to be a financial burden for less-economically developed countries. As a result, the World Health Organization (WHO) and UNICEF cooperated with other organizations to launch the COVID-19 Vaccine Global Access Facility, also known as COVAX, in April 2020. Working towards creating an equitable method to disseminate vaccines and testing resources amongst all countries at a lower cost, the program has 141 members working to make deals with manufacturers (United Nations, 2021).
Despite tremendous efforts to diminish the inequality of pandemic-related resources, such as hospital equipment, proper personal protective equipment, COVID tests and vaccines, an imbalance between lower-income and higher-income countries still persists. For instance, the US pre-purchased supplies that exceeded the requirements of their population. Hence, some suggest that the redistribution of these resources can create a global benefit (Clarke et al., 2021).
Vaccines have always been a controversial issue, and the story hasn’t changed when it comes to the COVID vaccine. In the US especially, there has been a lot of backlash against the administration of vaccines by anti-vaxxers. They question the reliability of these vaccines given the relatively short amount of development time; some even go to the extent of labeling vaccines as a method for the government to put ‘bots’ into people. Others believe that the vaccine is more dangerous than helpful and claim it can lead to the manifestation of diseases like autism, even though there is no viable proof of this occurring (Weatherspoon, 2014).
In fact, past experiences have proven to us that the most effective way of downsizing a disease is through vaccination and immunization. Therefore, equally distributing vaccines to a majority of the global population will bring us one step closer to ridding the world of masks and social distancing. In hard times like this where families have been in separation for extended periods of time, it is important that we continue to keep ourselves and others around us safe to maximize our vaccines’ efficiency and get through the pandemic.
References
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Chen, A. (2020, December 9). Pfizer Is Already Producing Millions Of Doses Of Its Vaccine. A Crucial Ingredient Comes From Mass. Www.wbur.org. https://www.wbur.org/news/2020/12/09/pfizer-vaccine-andover-manufacturing-facility
Clarke, P. M., Roope, L. S. J., Loewen, P. J., Bonnefon, J.-F., Melegaro, A., Friedman, J., Violato, M., Barnett, A., & Duch, R. (2021). Public opinion on global rollout of COVID-19 vaccines. Nature Medicine, 1–2. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-021-01322-9
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